Webinar on “Women in Agri-startups"
- Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare organized a webinar on “Women in Agri-startups: Creating Value with Supply Chain Management”.
- To commemorate 75 years of ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’, Minister of State for Agriculture & Farmers Welfare Kailash Choudhry released an e-book depicting Success Stories of 75 progressive women farmers and women entrepreneurs.
- The minister noted that women’s contribution to agricultural growth has increased dramatically.
Women and Agriculture
- The agriculture sector in India employs 80% of all economically active women; comprise 33% of the agricultural labour force and 48% of self-employed farmers.
- The Webinar on Women in Agri-Startups focused on:
- Enabling Women Entrepreneurship in Agribusiness
- Strategy and Schemes to support Agri-Startups in India
- Technology transfer to Startups for Commercialization
- Value Chain Management and
- Challenges faced by Agri-Startups Agripreneures.
- With women predominating at all stages of the agricultural value chain viz pre-harvest, post-harvest processing, packaging, and marketing; it is critical to implement gender-specific interventions to boost agricultural productivity.
Steps taken by Government to support women in agriculture
- The government has attempted to advance the agenda of ‘Gender Mainstreaming in Agriculture by:
- Earmarking funds for women under various schemes/programs and development interventions
- Introducing ‘pro-women initiatives’ to assist women in gaining access to all beneficiary-oriented components of various programmes.
- The focus of government is on following aspects:
- Formation of women Self Help Groups (SHGs)
- Women Federations
- Women Farmer Producer Organisations; as well as capacity-building interventions
- Linking them to microcredit
- Improving their access to information
- Ensuring women representation in decision making bodies at various levels
Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana: Empowering women in agriculture
- The Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana (MKSP), a sub-component of the Deendayal Antodaya Yojana-NRLM (DAY-NRLM), focuses on improving and enhancing women’s existing conditions.
- MKSP acknowledges the identity of “Mahila” as “Kisan” and strives to increase women’s competence in the area of agro-ecologically sustainable practices.
- It has a clear mission to reach out to the poorest of the poor and expand or diversify Mahila Kisan’s current portfolio of activities.
- MKSP focuses on encouraging smallholders to embrace climate-resilient agro-ecology, resulting in creating a pool of skilled community members.